Review: Naalen/The Needle 1951 The first Rialto Krimi

 I assume, as you are reading this, you are aware of the Rialto-Edgar-Wallace cycle that started in 1959 with "Der Frosch mit der Maske"/The Mark of the Frog. Maybe you even know that Rialto was originally a Danish company, held by Preben Philipsen. What you might not know is that Rialto had been active in the Danish movie business as a production company from 1904 but more as an owner of Scandinavian cinemas. When in 1950, the Danish state started to subsidize the local movie industry (that had been previously kept alive accessing the Third Reich and now had lost that market), Philipsen decided to produce two movies to test the market under the new law. The first one was the sexual drama "We Want a Child" that did very well domestically and abroad. Then came this one: The Needle. A Krimi (the Danes use the same word as the Germans). Which is and was not available outside of Denmark. Obviously a flop. And totally forgotten.

Let's take a look at it.

"The Needle" is the head of a criminal organisation of drug smugglers who extend into a new field: smuggled insulin. One of the clients is the projectionist of one of Rialto's cinemas (talk about synergy) who did not pay and has to be shot while they show a James Cagney film noir. Luckily we have a real police inspector in the audience with his wife, who puts the highest priority on commencing the movie projection. Ever efficient Danish police then do the whole crime scene procedure while the movie is still running so that he can happily drive home with his wife after the show!

"The Needle," who smuggles the insulin from "The British Zone" in West Germany and also steals it via a young female laboratory worker from the local laboratory, wants to settle down and lead a "normal" life. Therefore he plans one big delivery from Germany that his two henchmen/killers seriously botch.

The inspector, meanwhile, has tracked "The Needle" (who looks like Vincent Price) down and knows about the insulin enterprise.

In Germany, the lorry gets confiscated by the German police, and we get a showdown between "The Needle" and the boyfriend of the laboratory girl who is not happy about how she was pressured into the smuggling ring. Because now, "The Needle" has to rob the Danish laboratory.

It is not that I oversimplify. The script is very linear and basic. The movie concentrates mostly on some noirish shots and a little bit of action. I was not too bored, but the most animating thing about this movie are the scenes in Kiel, Germany, that were shot on location and show the city, severely damaged in WW2, looking like an open wound. But after 10 minutes we are back at either very shabby and dangerously underlit locations or the newly erected "Flamingo" studios near Kopenhagen.

The movie is a child of it's time, and it would be too far a stretch to see any similarities between this one and the EW-cycle a few years later. Basically, this is a Danish film crew that tries to emulate a contemporary American film noir. And they are very open about this, as the sets are full of noir cinema posters. 

Besides being a curio, though, the movie has not too much to offer and is simply put down by a massive lack of production value. Director Johan Jacobsen had had a huge success in '47 with the very, very good Danish film noir "Jenny and the Soldier," so expectations must have been high. But here, the script is not written by him, and the lack of quality (and production value) simply shows. And from what I read, he obviously tried to spice his movies up with lots of gratuitous softcore scenes from 1959, with "A Stranger Knocks" being banned for simulated sex scenes. But artistically, his movies never reached any high point after 1950. He died in 1972 at the age of 60.

Obviously unhappy with the whole enterprise, Philipsen did not produce another Krimi in Denmark but acquired the rights to Guy Hamilton's (James Bond) London Film's Edgar Wallace Thriller "The Ringer," only not to distribute this either, but instead leaving it on the shelf for 6 years until it was so dated that additional scenes had to be shot... leading to "Der Frosch mit der Maske"... but that is an entirely different story.

So without the flop of "The Needle"... who knows... the Edgar Wallace Rialto would have never happened. Thank you, "Needle.".

I watched the Danish "Filmperlen" DVD that has an acceptable SD scan of an still acceptable print. No restauration and sound is pretty bad. Region 2. No extras, no languages (except for danish) no st's.